From the bestselling author of Jewel (an Oprah Book Club pick) and A Song I Knew By Heart comes a haunting novel about a family whose lives are shaded by a lost dream of Hollywood stardom. This multi-generational tale revolves around the mesmerizing business of dreams and the enormous impact those dreams can have on the lives of ordinary people. (booksense)… (more)

Please join us for an evening with Bret Lott -- bestsellingauthor of Jewel(an Oprah Book Club pick) and A SongI Knew by Heart. Lott will read from and his haunting new novel, Ancient Highway, about a family whose lives are shaded by a lost dream of Hollywoodstardom.

In 1927, a fourteen-year-oldboy hops a boxcar in a dusty Texas town, headed for Hollywood, witha dream of life in the movies, far away from the farmland that he thinksholds nothing for him.

In 1947, aten-year-old girl has dreams of a real home, with a real family, ina Texas town as far from the crowded streets of Los Angeles where her handsome cowboy father chases an impossibledream of stardom and her mother holds a dark secret.

In 1980, ayoung man returns home from the navy, not to the estranged mother he ran away from, but to his colorfulgrandparents in Los Angeles, the ones who might have been a movie actor and a band singer.

In ANCIENTHIGHWAY: A Novel Bret Lott weaves together stories from threegenerations of a single family. Inspired by his own family, as was hisprevious novel, Jewel, this meditation on home, familial ties, and the mesmerizing businessof dreams shows once again that Bret Lott is an accomplished portraitistof the lives of ordinary people. I hope you will consider fortimely review coverage.

Bret Lott isthe author of the novels A Song I Knew by Heart, Jewel, Reed’s Beach, A Stranger’s House, The Man Who OwnedVermont, and The Hunt Club; the story collections Howto Get Home, A Dream of Old Leaves, and The DifferenceBetween Men and Women; and the memoirs Fathers, Sons, and Brothers,and Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life. His writing has appeared in The Southern Review, TheYale Review, The Iowa Review, Chicago Tribune, and Story, and has been widely anthologized.Editor of The Southern Review from 2004 to 2008, he liveswith his wife in Charleston, South Carolina.

Lott picks up the themes that dominated his 1999 Oprah Book Club Selection, Jewel, in this multigenerational saga. In 1927, 14-year-old Earl Holmes runs away from his unhappy home in Hawkins, Tex., for Hollywood to become a movie star. But poor bumpkin Earl has better luck in marrying big band singer Saralee Kennedy than he ever does building his acting résumé. Earl and Saralee's only child, Joan, grows up to resent her father's dogged pursuit of a practically nonexistent film career at the expense of his family's happiness. She has plenty of her own residual problems by the time she has her son, Brad, who joins the navy and returns in 1980 to live with his grandparents, Earl and Saralee, in L.A. Estranged from Joan, Brad takes it upon himself to heal the family's rifts. The colorful off-camera anecdotes of filmmaking are gems, particularly how Earl lands a bit role in a forgettable Three Stooges skit. (from Publishers Weekly) (vincentvan)… (more)